Tag: islam

Two days ago I was in my local branch of Ottakars (which is actually Waterstones but which I insist on calling Ottakars out of a loyal and anachronistic stubbornness akin to the United States’ obsession with flying the South Vietnamese flag) when I saw a book which made me unspeakably furious – so furious, in fact, that I had to buy a book by Frantz Fanon in order to calm down. This book was by a man called John R. Bradley, and it expounded the idea that the Arab Spring has gone terribly wrong because it has been hijacked by … Continue reading Say It Ain’t So: The “Islamic Winter”

A friend of mine pointed me today to the fact that Italy, in its infinite Berlusconiesque wisdom, has drafted a law to ban the burqa, dragging it that little bit further from tolerant sanity and closer to France, Belgium, and the city of Lleida (Lérida) in Spanish Catalunya. The major argument against the ban on the veil is two-fold, half of which is alluded to in the Guardian article linked above. It is an accepted fact that there are women in Europe who are forced to wear the burqa by their husbands, families, brothers, or societies. This, I will agree, … Continue reading Dan Savage in a Burqa